Workers often encounter a bewildering amount of information in the performance of their daily tasks. Business objects on their desktop are rarely organized or correlated in any kind of logical manner. For example, a sales order for an item may be processed using one type of form or software package, while inventory control for the same item may be handled by another. Even if an object can be processed by a variety of applications, the context and rendering are normally inconsistent, without any provision for collaboration. This is the set of circumstances experienced by workers when expected events occur during the normal course of business. Typically, they rely on their own past experience to deal with such events.
These difficulties are magnified when unexpected events occur. Contextual data, pattern detection, and recommendations for dealing with such events are usually absent, such that workers are often left entirely on their own in difficult situations. Thus, workers often have few or no tools available to deal with the occurrence of both expected and unexpected events.